LibraryLookup

No library chosen.Select a library to enable Library Lookup.

Select a library and the next time you click on any book's LibraryLookup button, that library's own website will open with the results of a search based on the book's title and author.

LibraryLookup is a unique and brand new internet service. With one click, the user can look up any book on any lovethebook.com web page in any library. There has never before been a literary website, bookstore or blog with such integrated library search functionality. Try it out! Select a library from our ever growing list of school, public and academic libraries and then click on the LibraryLookup button that appears beside every book featured on every lovethebook.com page. The selected library's own website will open with the results of a search performed based on the book title and author. Select your local public or university library if you want to actually check out books; or select a different library for the pure pleasure of browsing books. There is a wealth of books and information for all book lovers to be found in the world's libraries.

The vast majority of libraries -- school, public, academic, governmental and others -- have catalogs that are accessible using lovethebook.com LibraryLookup, but not all are. We have listed so far only a small fraction of the libraries that can be searched by lovethebook.com. We are adding more as fast as we can. If your local library is not listed, please let us know and it will get top priority for being added to the list. Write or leave a comment below with the name and location of your library.

Although lovethebook.com LibraryLookup is a unique and brand new internet service, it has its precursors on the web, specifically Jon Udell's LibrayLookup Project from 2002, from which we have borrowed the name. The advantages to using lovethebook.com LibraryLookup to its precursors, however, are many:

There are no problems with browser compatibility. There are no JavaScript problems. Separate installation is not required for individual browsers as there is no installation at all. The LibraryLookup functionality is an inherent and integrated part of each lovethebook.com web page.

The search is not limited to web pages featuring only a single book. You do not have to browse to the book detail page in order to search libraries using lovethebook.com LibraryLookup.

The search is based on the book title and author instead of the book isbn number. There are many different editions of the same book and each edition has its own isbn number. The chances that the lookup library has the exact edition of the book being searched for are much less likely than it having an alternative edition. In most cases, the exact edition is not relevant. When it is, you always have the option of selecting it, if present, from the result set when searching with lovethebook.com LibraryLookup.

A library search using the isbn number is a hit or miss operation. Either the library has the exact edition of the book or it does not. A search using the book title and author however, depending on the library, returns a rich result set of books, highly relevant to the search criteria, very often books that you never have heard of before and books that you would never have dreamed of searching for. Lovethebook.com LibraryLookup is a fantastic way for all book lovers to browse for books.

Would you like to send a reader to the library instead of Amazon or another online bookstore? Link to http://www.lovethebook.com/LibraryLookup.aspx?title=XXX&author=YYY where XXX is the book's title and YYY is the book's author. The first time the reader clicks on any such link she will be taken to this page and asked to select a library before being taken to the library's web site. All subsequent clicks will take the reader directly to the library's web site. For example, the html code to link to Animal Farm by George Orwell is <a href=http://www.lovethebook.com/LibraryLookup.aspx?title=Animal+Farm&author=George+Orwell>Animal Farm</a>. (Remember to substitute the '+' character for empty spaces.)

Librarians and library webmasters and bloggers:

Would you like to link to a lovethebook.com page and have the readers go directly to your library when they click on a book's LibraryLookup button? Link to the page using the library=ZZZ query parameter where ZZZ is your library's lovethebook LibraryLookup ID?
For example, to link to The American Book Awards page with all LibraryLookup buttons linking to the New York Public Library, the html code is <a href=http://www.lovethebook.com/Awards.aspx?bookaward=American+Book+Awards&library=1328>American Book Awards</a>. What is your library's LibraryLookup ID? Select your library and you will see it at the end of the root node of the library selection tree.

All users:

Can't find your library? We are adding them as fast we can. Tell us your library's name and location and we will give it top priority for being listed. In the meantime, select WorldCat as your current lovethebook library.

Librarians and library webmasters, bloggers and all users:

Lovethebook LibraryLookup is meant to be a positive service for libraries and library users. We are very interested in finding out if this is the case or not. Please give us your feedback below or use our contact form. We welcome suggestions for improvements and we would love to start a discussion on how lovethebook and websites in general can promote, contribute to and complement libraries.

Lovethebook LibraryLookup is still in its beta stage and we know that it still far from perfect in operation. There are many libraries still to add and many that cannot be added for technical reasons. Libraries continually change their online catalog addresses and catalog systems so not every link is operational. Please inform us if you find one so that we can correct it.